Schools play key role in healing after tragedy

Sister Nancy Kelly reflects on the legacy Anne Crispino left at Notre Dame High School on June 24, barely a year after the Elmira teacher and her husband, Myron, were killed in a motorcycle crash. A black granite bench was erected in the high school’s memorial park in the Crispino's honor.(Photo11: KELLY GAMPEL / Staff Photo)Buy Photo

When Anne Crispino, a sophomore English teacher at Notre Dame High School in Elmira, died in a motorcycle accident in June 2014, the school reached out for assistance to help its students and faculty heal.

Elmira City Schools counselor Heather Lutz and two other counselors from the district were asked to come to Notre Dame after Crispino's death to help grieving students and faculty members as an outside source of comfort.

"It freed up our people to be able to grieve in their way," said Notre Dame Principal Sister Nancy Kelly. "It was a nice gesture on their part, and they really were wonderful." Notre Dame, she added, would extend the same courtesy to the Elmira City School District if requested.

Most school districts will share their resources when they know another district in the area has experienced a loss, Lutz said.

That sharing of resources is one way school districts work to help their communities cope in the wake of loss. When a student, faculty member or other member of a school community dies, districts turn to crisis response plans carried out by a diverse group of counselors, social workers, teachers and administrators.

Although there are no state-mandated protocols for these teams, schools follow models and training to comfort students in every grade level, and call upon other school districts and outside organizations for additional resources when needed.

By having an organized plan in place, schools — where children spend the majority of their day — provide a comforting source of consistency and stability for students left with questions and fears after losing a friend or a loved one, said Susquehanna Valley social worker Daniel Kosick. His district faced the loss of two children in a house fire May 21 that also killed the children's mother and a young sibling.

"Schools are that solid, neutral ground," Kosick said. "We just do the best that we can to be that person who shows support no matter what students have going on in or outside of school."

In the Susquehanna Valley District, a phone tree quickly alerted school members on May 21 to the news that a fire had killed Nicole Tarbox, 33, and three of her children: Evyn, 13, a seventh-grader at the district's Richard T. Stank Middle School; Mya, a 9-year-old student at Brookside Elementary; and 3-year-old Mariah.

Shawn Tarbox II, 15, a student at Susquehanna Valley High School, managed to escape the fire.

Members of a crisis response team — composed of about 12 counselors, teachers, administrations and others from each school in the district — gathered at 7 that morning before students began arriving in order to put plans into action.

They discussed both the initial shock that the students would experience and the grief counseling that would likely be needed once the students began to process the loss. That grief, Kosick said, would be handled on a case-by-case basis.

"Everyone processes things differently, and every individual should be treated as an individual and their situation as unique," Kosick said.

On a national level

David Schonfeld, director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement, said most school districts have their own protocols and policies for responding to crises, which that can be supplemented by outside community organizations when needed.

While most states call for crisis-management plans to be established, he said, they allow districts to determine how those plans should be executed.

Officials from the New York State Education Department confirmed that issues of bereavement are decided at the local level.

Some school employees, such as guidance counselors and social workers, are specially trained to deal with bereavement as part of their educational backgrounds.

But social workers are not required for public schools and must be factored into the school's yearly budget, Kosick said.

Schonfeld provided training and technical assistance to about 1,000 school districts and school-level crisis teams in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Schonfeld established the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement in 2005, with the financial support of the National Philanthropic Trust and the September 11th Children's Fund.

The organization aims to spread awareness about the important role schools can provide to support students, staff and families at times of crisis and loss, while collaborating with organizations and agencies to further this goal, according to the NCSCB website.

Schonfeld said 9/11 underscored the importance of incorporating plans for mental recovery into a larger protocol.

"There was a tendency to have a separate recovery team," Schonfeld said. "Now there is a move to incorporate the mental recovery part."

Schonfeld said his organization recommends that districts incorporate outside organizations and people from diverse backgrounds into their crisis management teams to forge strong relationships that can be called upon during a crisis.

The Elmira City School District has utilized the services of the Chemung County Crisis Services in multiple situations, especially suicide prevention, said Elmira City Schools counselor Heather Lutz. The district has adapted guidelines for how it handles grief and bereavement from national guidelines, such as the NCSCB, she said.

Those guidelines were put to heart-wrenching use, Lutz said, in the aftermath of a fire that killed four Elmira students just before the start of the new school year in 2013.

Courtney M. Stanton, 17; Amera N. Mansour, 10; Nidal M. "N.J." Mansour II, 7; and Jordan N. Mansour, 5, died in a house fire on Elmira's Southside over Labor Day weekend of 2013. Mourners left brightly colored stuffed animals, balloons, candles and messages to the dead scrawled in chalk on the sidewalk outside the house.

"It was hard because there were so many of them — they were at different schools and had a lot of family," Lutz said. "The district was very supportive of the family."

She and a team of trained professionals with the resources to help students deal with grief came together after the fire to support the students in planned and personalized ways, she said: by attending funerals, planning classroom activities and maintaining the comfort of routine.

Had school been in session when the fire occurred, a crisis response team would have immediately assembled to create and implement a plan of action to help the students in dealing with grief and bereavement, Elmira City Schools Superintendent Hilary Austin said.

Grade by grade

Lutz said that teachers, guidance counselors and administrators helped students with their grief in ways tailored to each student's grade level.

"At the elementary school, it is a lot of just putting your arms around them and just letting them cry," Lutz said. She added that elementary students are much more willing to talk about their feelings of grief.

Crisis team members also make themselves available to parents.

"A big piece is letting parents know that we are here for their kids," she said.

Keeping a consistent routine is important for students of all grade levels, but Lutz said it is most important for the elementary students.

"That is how they experience life — it is just very developmental," she said.

For high school students, Lutz said she and other counselors simply made themselves accessible. High school students, she said, can face an onslaught of grief months after a loss occurs.

"High school students will just go about their businesses and then all of the sudden come into my office and just break down," she said.

Teenagers often find that peer support is most effective, with adults playing a supporting role, Lutz said.

Newfield Central School District clinical social worker Jamie McCaffrey said students at Newfield High School have become part of an organization called "Sources of Strength," which brings students and adults together to support each other. The national program was originally founded in North Dakota in the 1990s.

"The program helps break down the barriers that can prevent students from reaching out for support," McCaffrey said.

At Newfield, the program has provided a positive outlet for students and has helped offer comfort in the wake of a loss.

Play, art and pet therapy are especially effective recovery outlets for younger students, said Dara Raboy-Picciano, a counselor at Binghamton University. Raboy-Picciano, who worked in Child Abuse Prevention and Family Planning, said younger children may not have the words yet to express their feelings.

Trying to process the death of a classmate or family member can cause children to have questions that promote fear or anxiety, Raboy-Picciano said. Even if the children seem to be peacefully playing, it is important to consider what emotions they may be feeling but are unable to express.

"When you are older, you understand that there is this notion: Bad things happen," she said, "Many kids believe bad things are not supposed to happen — it is often a shock to their foundation."

When a district experiences the loss of a staff member, students can become sources of comfort for not just each other, but staff members as well.

After Crispino, of Notre Dame High School, died in 2014, students helped the staff to heal, Kelly said.

Crispino was hired in 1977, Kelly said, and her loss was devastating to the small school district who knew her well.

But the students stepped up. Even ones who were normally "trouble-makers" stopped giving their teachers a hard time, she said.

"One of the things I said to the kids was, 'Your teachers have lost a friend and a colleague — what I am asking you today is to take care of your teachers,'" she said.

But the school also encouraged its community, from the day of Crispino's death, to talk about her and what she meant to their lives.

"Everybody took care of everybody," Kelly said. "It is one of the nice things about being a small community and small school — we were able to pray a lot."

In one of the most helpful healing exercises, students and staff wrote notes bearing memories of Crispino on an 8-by-4-foot bulletin board, which was then given to Crispino's family, Kelly said.

District collaboration

Amy Morris, a social worker at Maine-Memorial Elementary School, said that in situations where students and staff are traumatized by a loss, the district the school will pull together to offer support in any way they can.

M-E has accepted books and other resources from nearby districts such as Union-Endicott, she said.

Students at Johnson City Intermediate School collected money and made a $1,000 "gift of peace" to M-E in March 2012 to build a memory garden to commemorate past losses in the school community.

M-E offered to help the Susquehanna Valley Central School District after the deaths of the Tarbox family members, Morris said.

Morris said Maine-Endwell schools purchased and gathered books and other resources to help with the long process of dealing with grief after the initial shock of the tragedy had passed.

"I passed along some information I had come across that we thought would be helpful for younger children," Morris said. She said she specifically recommended a "Sesame Street" DVD on grief — which is free from any PBS station — some support groups and a camp for students who have experienced a death in their families or communities.

Making meaning together

From candlelight vigils to scholarships, school communities often seek ways to show support, stand united and pay tribute after losing one of their own.

On May 26, more than 800 people filed into Susquehanna Valley High School in Conklin for a remembrance service to honor the Tarbox family. And fifth-graders at Brookside Elementary donated more than $3,000 to the family, funds typically raised to cover their graduation costs.

People of all ages find comfort in creative ways of meaning from death, said Greg Eells, who serves as the director of counseling and physiological services in Cornell University's Gannett Health Services.

Those who knew 14-year-old Hayli Alizbeth Hough, a freshman at Dryden High School who died April 4 from leukemia, honored her legacy with a memorial run and balloon launch.

Faculty members, including middle social studies teacher Lois Loiselle, organized the run, which was held May 1.

After Hayli's death was announced at the school, Loiselle said, it was initially hard for faculty and students to pull themselves together, but that the school promoted an environment in which its community could grieve openly.

Nearly $3,800 was raised from the run and raffles, and proceeds will be donated to help others with leukemia, Loiselle said.

She said she was amazed by the community's support: While organizers had hoped for 100 runners, more than 250 participated. Many of Hayli's friends and family were at the event, as well as others affected by leukemia.

"A lot of people said that they thought the run was a nice closure that brought the community together," Loiselle said. "We all live on, and we just have to continue to work towards healing and getting over loss in different ways."